My New Year's Present to You...a free pattern!

Hello lovely readers. My Google blog reader is full of great "best of" and "top 2012" posts from all of my favorite bloggers. Those are much fun but I thought that I would do something different instead. I have a present for you.

A free pattern just for A Few Threads Loose readers!

This great little pattern originally came from a 1949 sewing pattern catalog. And now it's digital, and it's yours for the sewing!
Click Here to be taken to the free download. It's an easy two page pattern with a simple diagram and sewing instructions.

The original description is great. It reads:
"Love to look neat as a pin? Like to comb your hair after you put on your dress? The make this smock-modern aid to good grooming! You run it up ever so quickly from this pattern and instructions, in that wonderful new plastic fabric. Use it when you comb your hair, when you put on make-up, or to protect you while you shampoo or give yourself a home - permanent. And not to make a pun, it's a wonderful shower present, you know!"

I just love that friendly, woman to woman tone that articles from the 1940's use. It's so informal, so...blogger-like!

And what should you use for fabric, you might ask? We've come a long way from the first plastic fabrics. Check out this great Amy Butler laminate cotton from Fabric.com!

Or this lovely cotton laminate from Anna Maria Horner:

Or this eye-catching cotton laminate by Heather Bailey... my personal favorite.

I hope you all have a lovely New Years Eve. There are no parties for me, just my sweetie, a bottle of Champagne, and some Champagne Belgian truffles and that's just the way I like it!

P.S. Speaking of bubbly, I'm celebrating the New Year over at Mrs. Depew Vintage with a coupon code for 10% off. Just use "Champagne" in the 'apply coupon code' part at checkout. It expires Jan. 2nd!

The Picture Perfect Apron

 Have you ever seen a pattern for sale and known instantly that no matter what it took, no matter what the price, you were going to sew the hell out of it?

That's how I felt about Pictorial 8514 when I found it on Etsy.

 And boy, did I. I got the fabric during my Ikea fabric shopping adventure.

I LOVE this pattern. It came together so easily and looks fantastic. I would have completed it much more quickly but I kept running out of bias binding. This apron took over 6 yards of bias binding (that's two trips to the store for not reading the pattern envelope very carefully!).

The ruffles are insane, and frilly, and girly and there almost aren't enough of them.

 While I was monogramming the matching towels, I made sure that I embroidered my pocket fabric at the same time. I'm not a fan of changing out my embroidery foot mechanism more than I absolutely have to.

 I think that this sailor collar is the very best part. How amazing would this apron look in navy blue with a cute little anchor embroidered on the pocket?!

And naturally, Vincent is always there to help with the photo-shoots...

It's so hard to find apron patterns from the 1930's, and even harder to find ones that are cute enough to sew. What do you think, should I make a digital reproduction of the pattern so others can have as much fun with it as I did?

Pattern Envy

I regularly troll ebay for great patterns and recently I found a doozy.

Hollywood 1667 may be the most ideal apron pattern I have ever seen. But of course, I was outbid.
But can you guess how much this darling pattern sold for? Can you?

OUCH!
So of course I can make a pattern for this, it's very simple... if only I didn't have 8 PROJECTS GOING ALL AT ONCE. I think I need to finish a few things first.

But on the note of lovely vintage patterns selling for quite a bit, I was bidding (what I considered to be) quite high on this lovely hat pattern a couple of days ago and lost it too.

Have you ever seen a more stunning cloche?

Can you guess what this perfection sold for?

Shabby Apple Boysenberry Pie Apron Guest Giveaway

Shabby Apple Boysenberry Pie Apron Guest Giveaway

Having recently sewn 12 aprons over a couple of weeks for the staff at work, I'm a bit aproned out but I'm very tempted to buy one of these lovely little numbers from Shabby Apple to add to my ridiculously large collection.

If you want one for yourself, you could go to their shop or you could enter to win one in Grossgrain's blog giveaway.

In my seriously skewed (martha stewart induced) opinion, one can never have too many stunning aprons in which one can dance 'round the kitchen like a goddess on crack. I'm just saying.

Image courtesy of Shabby Apple

Dammit, I forgot the pearls, um, and my face.